


Vollstrecker

by vikkyleigh



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Scourgers, Spoilers for episode 62, a hint of widojest for flavor, caleb's backstory, how this conversation could have gone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 15:42:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18781258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vikkyleigh/pseuds/vikkyleigh
Summary: A different direction the "Scourgers" conversation could have gone. SPOILERS for Episode 62!





	Vollstrecker

“Scourgers. People who are… shadows in stories,” said Beau, remembering something. “I honestly wasn’t sure if they were real – but then, there are people who don’t think the expositors are real. They’re like, royal assassins? Like, the people that rich people don’t want you to know that they...” she trailed off as Jester began talking over her excitedly.

“So I scried into like, a really secret meeting!” Caleb barely heard her over the sudden rush of blood in his ears.

“That sounds like,” he began. He hardly noticed as Beau and Jester slowly dropped what they were saying and turned to look at him. His throat clicked from dryness as he swallowed. “Me and my friends…” he paused again. Nott, too, was looking at him expectantly. “I only heard the term ‘scourgers’ once. I… ‘vollstrecker’ is the title I was more familiar with.”

“You were a scourger?”

A pause, then softly, “No.”

“… But were they training you to be one?” continued Beau, her voice rough.

“I think so,” he nearly whispered. Half a dozen conversations from another life were suddenly clawing their way into his memory. Standing straight and proud as they listened to yet another reminder of their duty to the glory of the empire. Whispered jokes between the three of them about someday becoming “shadows.” The heavy knot of knowledge in his gut that it was, perhaps, a good thing that his parents were traitors, since a true vollstrecker ought not to hold any ties outside of their mission. Above all, the memory of the icy certainty that he used to feel so secure in cascaded down his shoulders. It nearly took his breath away, as it always did. The shock of it.  
He shivered and felt the eyes of the Nein turn to him. He half-closed his eyes and gripped hard at his forearms, trying to force breath through his nose. He hoped they could not see his hands shaking. 

“Ooh! Does that mean you were going to be like, an assassin!” said Jester excitedly, seemingly oblivious to his reaction. “That’s so cool!” Beau frowned though, and stepped a little closer, half extending a hand to him and then stopping. 

“Ja, but I, I failed though. I broke off.” He nearly choked on the words. Fjord was watching him intently from across the room, hand stroking over his chin like he did when he was deep in thought. Nott seemed to have been distracted earlier, but now he could feel her eyes on him from where she stood near Jester. Caleb suddenly thought that it would be terribly convenient if the karmic retribution he so richly deserved struck him dead at that instant; but he remained unfortunately alive and present in the conversation. 

“…You’ll always be an assassin to me?” offered Jester. She could tell he was upset, surely. But her misunderstanding of his discomfort struck him as discordantly ridiculous and he grimaced to cover the unhinged laughter he felt bubbling up inside him.

“You can be anything you... set your mind to?” Added Nott, trying to help.

Beau thankfully cut her off. “That’s kind of a weird sentiment right now.”

Another pause loomed before them. Caleb could hear Yasha and Caduceus shifting from where they were standing a little behind him. Nott opened her mouth to say something about the Bright Queen, and he hoped his look conveyed his desperate thankfulness at the change of subject. But Jester cut her off.

“How did you fail?” She asked, kindly. An innocent question asked in an attempt to make him feel better. Looking at her face tilted slightly to the side, he found himself answering almost before he realized it. 

“There is, a, a test,” he heard himself begin. Beside him, Beau tensed. “That you have to pass. To become one, a vollstrecker. A scourger. And I didn’t, I couldn’t –” His voice broke off suddenly.

“Was it something very horrible that you had to do?” Prompted Jester. “Like, did you have to like, eat a baby or murder your whole family or like, get naked in front of the whole court and let King Dwendal cut off your balls…?”

When had the war room had all the air vacuumed out of it? The lamps lighting the perpetual darkness were going out one by one. The world had narrowed to a point at the end of his nose. He reached out blindly and felt a warm, calloused hand catch his. He gasped air back into his lungs.

“The, the second one,” he whispered. Sound was back, suddenly. He heard Jester, and Nott beside her, gasp in unison; both shocked by his admittance for different reasons. Strangely detached from himself, he saw Fjord’s hand go from stroking his jaw to covering his mouth, and saw Caduceus step into his field of vision, pale brow wrinkled in concern. 

“Oh Caleb,” continued Jester, he eyes wide in horror, “That’s so awful! Of course you failed! So,” she added with the air of having figured something out, “they told you to go murder your family and you were like ‘No!’ And then you had to run away from them and now they hate you, and that’s why you are worried they are going to come after you and…” Her voice trailed off as whatever catch had been holding in his madness broke. Caleb began to laugh a high, wheezing laugh, panicked and uncontrollable. He held his free hand up to his mouth as though to hold in the sound and it came away wet with tears. They were all looking at him still, faces worried. He felt Beau squeeze his other hand gently, then startled as he felt a large hand on his shoulder and Yasha’s presence looming comfortingly behind him. 

He swallowed down his laughter with something strangely like a sob and sucked in a breath painfully between his teeth. “No,” he said roughly. He cleared his throat. Jester was still looking at him so, so sympathetically. So expectantly. He hated to disappoint her. “No, you all deserve to know what kind of, of monster you have in your midst. I did not say ‘No.’ I did not run away. I believed in what they told me. I believed in the Empire above all else. I was so sure I was doing what, what had to be done. I was so sure.” He repeated. “It wasn’t until … after. That I failed. That I broke.” He watched the realization dawn on Jester’s face as her eyes slowly filled with tears. Her hand rose to cover her mouth.

“Oh,” she said quietly. She didn’t say anything else. Caleb knew then that being struck dead in that instant would be far, far relief more than he deserved. No, he deserved to have died long ago but in his miserable current existence he deserved to be standing here with the burden of Jester’s disappointment. His neck bowed under the weight of it. 

“I remember you telling me,” said Fjord’s voice, suddenly. Caleb had almost forgotten he was in the room. “When I asked you if you had ever been mind controlled before. You told me ‘not like that.’ But it seemed to have more to it than that. Was there any kind of magic, maybe? That they used on you?” Fjord seemed eager to help Caleb deny his culpability, as though he had not just heard the heinous crime he had confessed to. 

“No,” he said bitterly. “No, I was in my right mind, before.”

“Were you, though?” Beau spoke up from his elbow. He had been grateful for her steadying presence at his side, but of course she didn’t know what she was talking about. “Didn’t you say that Ikithon planted false memories of your parents confessing to be traitors? And collapsing and going crazy immediately after doesn’t sound like the behavior of someone in his right mind.”

“Of course I wasn’t in my right mind!” he shouted, trying in vain to pull his arm out of Beau’s grip. “I murdered my mother and father! I set their house on fire! I did it and I thought to myself ‘this is the right thing to do. This is the only way.’ Those are not the actions of someone in their right mind! And yet,” he continued, panting, nearly shivering in desperation to make them understand, “I was clear headed. I knew what I was doing. Yes, I believed my parents were traitors. But even if they were, if they had been traitors – do you think it makes me any less, less guilty?” He laughed incredulously.

“So let me get this straight,” interrupted Fjord, stepping closer and laying his own steadying hand on Beau’s shoulder. “You admit this guy messed with your head by planting fake memories. Are you saying there’s no chance that he was messing with your head in any other kind of way? I’m not saying it absolves you of all responsibility, but from what you’ve told us about him he was a pretty fucked up sort of mentor, doing experiments and the like.” He nodded not-quite-tactfully at the scars on Caleb’s bare arms. 

“Mr. Caleb,” added Clay, stooping down a little to make eye contact. “how old were you when this happened?”

There was a long pause. Caleb stood dull and silent, unsure of how to make his mouth form words. 

“You didn’t say when you told us this story before,” prompted Nott, gently. “You only said you were ‘old enough to know better.’”

“Seventeen.” He whispered between dry lips. “I was seventeen.” There was a sharp intake of breath from the group. A spike of pain flared through his shoulder as Yasha suddenly tightened her grip. He turned and saw her face settled into a mask of rage she usually reserved for battles. That was surprising, but not at surprising as the chilling anger in Caduceus’ voice.

“You were a child,” he snarled out. “A child manipulated and experimented on – I’m sorry,” He said, the anger leaving his tone and swiftly as it had entered, leaving only a soft sadness. “I don’t mean to insist that your memory of the situation is wrong. If you truly had agency at the time, and you did this thing anyway, then you are correct that you have something to atone for. But from what you have said so far – about mind altering spells and experiments with crystals, about collapsing into madness; and for it all to happen before the human age of maturity, when your elders still have complete control over your life – I wonder how much of a choice you had in any of it. Would it ever really have been an option to say no?”

Clay’s eyes were so kind and understanding that Caleb was forced to pull his gaze away. It landed unfortunately on Jester, who was still standing with her hand over her mouth, tears filling her blue eyes and leaving soft tracks on her cheeks. Jester, whose age he did not know but was certainly young, who would understand that seventeen was old enough to know better. Jester who had looked at him with fear in her eyes after the event with the Succubus. Jester who was so kind, so beautiful, so innocent, who looked at him now with such horror in her eyes. Surely she would understand, would condemn him as he deserved. 

“Jester, please,” he whispered in supplication. He couldn’t look at her face anymore and closed his eyes. A moment later he opened them again in surprise, as he felt Jester’s soft hand on his cheek. She stood directly in front of him, looking up into his face. He struggled to draw breath, feeling like he was really might pass out this time. 

“Caleb,” she began, her voice trembling. “It sounds like you did a terrible, terrible thing. And I don’t know how much choice you had about it. It sounds like maybe you don’t even know how much choice you had about it. But I do know that you are my friend. I know that whatever you did in the past you are a good person now – a person who worries about my Momma in Nicodronas and encourages Nott when she needs it and lends your cat to your friends because they miss their pets. You are the kind of person,” she continues, her voice stronger now, “who was willing to do a crazy thing, and give up a crazy powerful magical artifact to save your friends and who now is doing everything that he can to stop a war. I know that there is no way that the person you are now would make a choice like that with a clear head. And,” she added, bringing her other hand up and placing it gently on his other cheek. “I think your Mom and Dad would be proud of the person that you are now. I know my Momma would be – I know that I am.”

Caleb felt his knees go weak as all the strength left his body, yet he stayed standing. They were all around him, he realized. Beau supporting him on one side with Fjord reaching out a steadying hand from behind her, Yasha a solid presence at his back. Caduceus standing at his other side, not quite touching him but with a hand extended to support him as he swayed. Nott holding his other hand, a silently supporting presence at his side. And Jester before him, holding his face gently in her hands like something precious.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the first fanfiction I've published since 2012. I appreciate Critical Role for getting me to actually finish writing something for once, although I'll admit it ends a little abruptly. Maybe next week when we have more information I'll write a follow up! Who knows?


End file.
